This refugee’s stare was cold, his generosity warm

Imet Pascal Pio Alau at the Liberty Primary School in the Adjumani district in Uganda. He is one of more than one million South Sudanese refugees to have arrived in Uganda since 2014. Our encounter came about by chance during a Press trip with a local Dubai charity.

As school children were playing outside two concrete block classrooms, kicking up orange sand and laughing, I spotted a group of adults inside one of the buildings; their faces serious. I overheard one man describe his struggles within the refugee camp. He had a wife and 13 children. That man was Pascal.

As the discussion ended, I approached him; I wanted to know his story. It was his eyes that first struck me. His sclera (the white outer layer of the eye) had a yellow twinge. His irides, so dark in colour they almost blended in with his pupils.

He held my stare throughout our 30 minute chat and it was that close up of his face which appeared front and centre on the final print page. It went on to win an Award of Excellence from the Society for News Design (SND).

I asked Pascal about his 13 children. I wondered how one man could support such a large family in a refugee camp where assistance from charities was the sole provider putting food on the table. That’s when I found out four of the 13 children were actually orphans.

Their parents (Pascal’s neighbours in South Sudan) were both deceased. One succumbed to disease; the other was a victim of gunfire during conflicts back home. He told me he had no choice but to take them with him to Uganda. “They are people of God, I cannot leave them,” was the quote in my story ‘Escaping conflict and Civil War in South Sudan, I am a refugee’, which went to press on December 9, 2017.

Working for Khaleej Times has seen me cover many stories, both locally and internationally. But it is Pascal’s story that has stuck out in my memory.

I live in a region (the Middle East) rife with saddening stories about displaced refugees from Syria, Iraq and Yemen, but this story was a little different. It shed light on the millions of South Sudanese refugees; refugees who are rarely talked about in the press.

The one thing that struck me most about Pascal was his generosity. As he sat telling me the daily issues he faced: like the hours spent each day travelling 3km to collect water from one of only two boreholes in his settlement, he did something which humbled me.

As an aid worker was handing out juice and biscuits, Pascal took his and offered them to me. I was his “guest” and he wanted to make me feel welcome. A man with so little didn’t hesitate to give me everything he had at that one moment.